Ways Childhood Trauma Can Influence Your Adult Life
Believe it or not, childhood trauma can impact your emotions and mental health years, even decades after it happened. Time may heal all wounds, but the scars remain and shape us. Identifying how childhood trauma can influence our adult lives is the first step in changing our mindsets and putting a stop to negative behaviors.
Childhood trauma can be a precursor to toxic relationships, feeling not good enough, feeling like a failure, and even addiction in adulthood. This is not entirely surprising, as we know early childhood to be a critical emotional, mental, and physical time for development. The negative and positive experiences that are imprinted in those early years teach us and greatly determine how we see the world and people. These influences of childhood trauma on adulthood can be subconscious, or even unknown to some people experiencing it. However, understanding the way our history influences us can help us navigate solutions and change to improve our social, emotional, and mental health, as well as self-respect and self-esteem and how we function in our relationships.
Beyond just understanding, EMDR therapy at Reimagine Her Therapy can help you rewire the way those memories are stored in your brain, allowing you to experience relief from the negative shade cast by childhood trauma.
What is childhood trauma?
Childhood trauma can take many different forms, from attachment wounds and toxic messaging to specific instances of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. Factors that contribute to the likelihood of encountering traumatic experiences in childhood include the death of a parent, poor family health or socioeconomic status, incarceration of a parent, parents separating/divorcing, and violence in the home/neighborhood.
Researchers have effectively studied the impact of experiencing traumatic events in adults using the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, a 10-question assessment that reflects many of the items listed above. By understanding how these experiences impacted us then and now, clinical professionals can better develop interventions to help mitigate risks associated with childhood trauma.
Studies show direct links between traumatic events experienced in childhood and engaging in high-risk behaviors as an adult. High-risk behaviors can include substance use, impulsiveness, and promiscuity.
How childhood trauma can impact adulthood
Childhood trauma can impact our relationships, behaviors, and how we view the world in a variety of ways.
Attachment styles
Our interactions and relationships during childhood, especially with our caretakers, heavily influence our standards for love, belonging, and trust. Those who experience childhood trauma may also experience unhealthy attachment styles that contribute to behaviors such as codependency, infidelity, jealousy, and trust issues. Anxious attachment styles, in particular, can lead people to seek validation from others and act as “people-pleasers.” This can be dangerous as it can lead people to tolerate emotional and/or physical abuse from their partners or family.
Lack of self-worth
Children are very observant and tend to process and internalize things very differently than adults. Kids are not cognitively developed enough to understand that bad things happening to them are not their fault. Therefore low self-esteem and lack of self-worth are instilled in the child because of their experiences.
Addiction
Childhood trauma and substance use have been linked in many studies. Research shows that substance use can be early onset due to childhood trauma such as acting out to get attention. Substance use can also appear later in adulthood and still be directly correlated to traumatic events. Many people will use substances as a negative coping skill. If someone had a traumatic childhood experience(s), their emotional intelligence/development is likely lacking, therefore substance use is used as a “crutch” to numb the pain.
Stress Levels
It is not new knowledge that excessive stress can have adverse effects on a person. Childhood trauma is documented to be linked to a heightened stress response (think: always feeling a flight or fight response). This can cause physical health problems, such as heart disease, but also lower immune system function and difficulty regulating emotions. For individuals experiencing this level of hypervigilance, mindfulness is an incredibly valuable tool.
Healing your history
Fortunately, many individuals have success in overcoming childhood trauma with the appropriate intervention and support. Some of the consequences of childhood trauma, such as developing anxiety, depression, PTSD, or addiction can be helped with therapy. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) are effective evidence-based treatments for diagnoses commonly seen in adults who have experienced childhood trauma.
Furthermore, therapy and counseling can help you improve your ability to regulate your emotions to help you improve your relationships and self-worth.
It is never too late to heal past trauma. To learn more about childhood trauma and healing in adulthood, visit Reimage Her Therapy to gain a deeper understanding of your past and effective coping skills to help you live your most authentic, full life.
